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[Lime]

Necessary article on Waypoint (formerly known as VICE gaming) by Tina Amini. I think reading it would do a lot of good for gaming enthusiasts in order to appreciate how much effort it requires to create a game and how many workhours have to be put in to create the entertainment products. For those of us who've developed games, this is perhaps just basic stuff, but I think it's important for people unfamiliar with game development project to realize how complex it can be. Interesting quotes from Bruce Straley on TLOU, Nina Freeman from Fullbright, Thisdale from Eidos Montreal on Deus Ex Mankind Divided, among others.

Looking at game dev as building a house:

"The challenge of making a game is sometimes like trying to build a house blindfolded," said Ryan Benno, environment artist at Insomniac Games—whose artwork you've also seen in Telltale's Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us series, as well as Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare—to me over email. "You can plan out where the walls will be, what the rooms will be like, how to make it stable and functional, but until you are actually in the space you don't actually know."

Working in blind:

"There are things you just don't know until you get it done," Bruce Straley, co-director at Naughty Dog, told me over the phone. Straley, an artist and designer known for his work on Uncharted 2, The Last of Us, and Uncharted 4, was telling me about the importance of developing with a mind toward the vision, or core experience of the game. "There are these lessons that we learn in production. Even in demos that we've done. It's all playable but there are certain mechanics that we haven't fully fleshed out. I don't know how this is going to work in the grand scheme of things. The equations might not add up as far as what's fun or what's not or what's engaging. I do my best."

Interdependence between departments:

Otherwise you run into situations Thisdale certainly has experience with, like when a modeler he was working with went well over the polygon limit designing detailed world assets, like dumpsters. "They were so heavy in polygons that it was costing us an actual frame per second, which in a game world is super expensive," Thisdale said. "Experience will tell you how many polygons for each subject, how much texture, can I put a UV filter, can I put bump mapping, is there going to be direct and dynamic lighting on it, should I put bezels on it." These seemingly minor technical details, though visually impressive, add a lot of weight onto the game's performance. It's a delicate balance, and sometimes pretty sacrifices have to be made for the benefit of the overall experience.

Greyboxing

The game that you see in its final, presentable form, or even the game that you see in snapshots during E3 or any trailer that's released, is not the game that developers work with for the years that development takes. Instead, developers load up small maps, levels, or testing grounds and play through individual experiences to make sure they're playing right. "We spend all our time in a grey box," Thisdale told me. "The game usually takes way too long to load so we just load whatever gym we have, which is usually an empty room with a light in the middle and a box on the side and then you do whatever you need to be doing." This can be running, shooting, or even testing visual effects like rain or smoke. "That's what we do. That's the game we play," Thisdale said. "The game I just released—[referencing the latest Deus Ex game, Mankind Divided]—this is the state I saw it in for four years."

The layer of code running in the background:

Straley worked on The Last Of Us, a game without a jump button. "The code written just to get a character to show up on screen is astounding. And the code that's written to read animation data and figure out all the skinning and weighting on a character to animate them properly—all of this without actually translating them through space is already months of work for somebody," he explained. "This is all during the process of deciding if you're even going to have the character jump, what the consequences of having jump are, how they jump, what that choice will mean for designers, their layouts, and the effect on artists, all the while remembering your top goal is to try to make the player feel engaged."

Producers:

Returning to the building-a-house analogy, imagine a contract manager whose financial responsibility is to see a project through—that's the role a game's producer plays. Other people lay the bricks, but the producer makes sure the team has enough bricks to lay. Those producers either represent or answer to a parent company, publisher or investor who, in agreeing to fund the project, decided part of the agreement would be contingent on seeing early developments on the vision of the house. "Most big companies have investors," Thisdale told me. "They're [publicly traded companies]. EA, Ubisoft have stock. These people invest, they need a return. They say, my quarterly, my yearly, I need a return." They control the money and, sometimes, resources are meted out on the basis of predetermined milestones, like greenlight pitch meetings or a demonstration of an early prototype. As long as a studio keeps hitting those internal deadlines, they'll get the money they need to continue work on their project.

E3 demos

This can mean taking time out from the production schedule to focus on creating a "vertical slice" of their game—essentially a brief demonstration of the game—meant to represent the whole game "pie." Developers take a level or map or section of the game, polish it to the extent that they can with beautiful art and music, and share it with the public as their latest snapshot of progress.

"You don't even have your whole game pinned down, you don't even know all your mechanics yet," Straley told me. "And you're having to pin down something and make it playable publicly, live on a stage, and you're basically saying to the public, 'This is the way it's gonna play, this is the way it's going to look, and this is the experience you can expect from us eight months from now.' It's extraordinarily unwieldy for production."

Lots more at the link: http://www.vice.com/read/why-its-so-hard-to-make-a-video-game

 

[Shaanyboi]

I mean... that's a valid question.

 

[MaverickHunterAsh]

Thank you for sharing this, OP - it's a wonderful article and an important read. It boggles my mind how many people have no idea (or at least act like they have no idea) how many years of blood, sweat, and tears go into making all these incredible games we enjoy. Game development is incredibly difficult and thankless, and no one sets out to make a bad game despite all the effortless accusations of "lazy" game developers and bullshit like that.

 

[icespide]

frankly it's a miracle that any game gets made with as few bugs as they do

 

[WillyFive]

Excellent article.

It always made me smile when people say "wow this game seems really far along already" when looking at E3 demos and such; when in reality anything outside that level is still a mess.

 

[LelouchZero]

Good stuff, thanks for posting. It's great to hear about this!

 

[Rexatality]

Amazing article. I know game development is hard and rough and its why it frustrates me when I see people use ''lazy devs'' as an argument.

 

[Mutagenic]

Tina? Cool.

 

[Krejlooc]

KThe article is really written from the perespective of big team projects from a publisher that secured financing without team involvement. Though the article certainly cannot cover everything, I could write several articles as long as this detailing my few good and many, many bad experiences with venture capitalists and general investors... if I werent under nda to ever speak about them publicly. Suffice to say, for indies, everything they just said mainly still applies, with the additional burdon of playing businessman to suits.

As someone who is investigating starting a kickstarter project, and as someone who has already been burned by venture capitalists in the past, let me say that the general public has no idea what an amazing, game-changing tool kickstarter is. It empowers small developers to be able to choose a path without dealing with backstabbing VCs. The general public can be harsh to deal with, but I would put way more confidence in a random dude in nebraska who donated $10 to a project being a better investor than a venture capitalist.

Seriously, many have no idea how much work dealing with investors is. I will go as far as to say that, in many instances, investors are the reason games ship in poor states.

 

[Yabberwocky]

Ha, just happened to finish reading this. Fantastic article, I'm looking forward to more articles like this from Waypoint.

 

[supernormal]

I've worked in production for a range of various mediums, from music, to comercial video shoots, documentaries, magazines and even some software development. It boggles my mind that videogames get made at the level of fidelity that they do. There's just so many things going that conflict with each other but also have to work together somehow. I would go crazy if I had to manage or direct the production of a videogame.

 

[Lylo]

Very interesting article and anyone who argues that making videogames is an easy task is completely out of their minds, but solely as a consumer, i don't (nor shouldn't) care how hard game development is to expect a quality product for my money.

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

It's infuriating when the armchair devs on GAF spew garbage as if they knew what the fuck they are talking about. If it wasn't complaints about "downgrades", they'd be complaining about the framedrops that would have occurred had they not downgraded. "oh well then thy should have optimized/programmed a better engine!"

Bitch, do you even know what you're saying?

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

Interesting article. I've been saying for years that it would be great if someone could miraculously come up with an easier method to create video games, but that is probably being unrealistic since it seems like no one came up with a solution yet after all of these years. I did a little programming a long time ago for a project and it was definitely extremely challenging for me, so I cannot imagine how difficult it would be working on a $20-$100 million dollar project with seemingly endless lines of code and other things for a complicated. lengthy game.

 

[Krejlooc]

It's infuriating when the armchair devs on GAF spew garbage as if they knew what the fuck they are talking about. If it wasn't complaints about "downgrades", they'd be complaining about the framedrops that would have occurred had they not downgraded. "oh well then thy should have optimized/programmed a better engine!"

Bitch, do you even know what you're saying?

The article that was discussed earlier this week about how consoles are "shit" because they "broke their promise" to have instantly loading games... was goddam infuriating. Absolutely infuriating topic to read.

 

[Roaringburn]

Seeing the development of the UC4 jeep sequence was pretty crazy. Video games are hard :/

 

[Krejlooc]

If you want to know what being a software engineer is like, watch silicon valley. That show is really accurate.

 

[meltingparappa]

I'm making a visual novel using a freeware engine with thousands of pages of easily available documentation and benevolent forum members, which is probably LITERALLY the easiest way to make a piece of interactive fiction, and JESUS FUCKING CHRIST some UI elements will forever remain subtly broken because it's just too much to wrap my mind around.

I can't imagine scaling that into an AAA game and managing a pipeline of hundreds, sometimes across several countries.

 

[Lime]

The article that was discussed earlier this week about how consoles are "shit" because they "broke their promise" to have instantly loading games... was goddam infuriating. Absolutely infuriating topic to read.

What thread was this?

 

[hodayathink]

What thread was this?

It was a Jim Sterling video/thread, IIRC.

Edit: Here it is.

 

[zsynqx]

Seeing the development of the UC4 jeep sequence was pretty crazy. Video games are hard :/

Yup

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

Literally, none of the games I've worked on feel like real games to me, because I spend almost all of my time dealing with bits & pieces and only a tiny amount of time working with something that resembles a finished game.

 

[Krejlooc]

Seeing the development of the UC4 jeep sequence was pretty crazy. Video games are hard :/

There are so many things that can be hard behind the scenes that cant really be communicated in a video to easily explain what was so hard.

I'll give an example - I was testing a program from an engine ive written the other week. Really deep into development, everything is running great. I figured I had saved myself a good chunk of time by just really managing my memory by hand, just trying to be generally careful. It ran well, memory usage was low, no memory leaks found by valgrind or anything.

Well, I accidentally left it running overnight on two pcs. Came back in the morning after they had been running for like 9 hours. The linux build still was maintaining a small memory footprint. The windows version, by contrast, had ballooned up to using 3 gb of virtual memory. They are the exact same codebase.

Que an entire weekend of bug sorting. In the end, it was a windows-specific memory fragmentation error from the way I handled my heap. It probably would have manifested on other operating systems as well eventually. Not a memory leak - my program was never losing track of allocated memory. Rather, the fragmentation I was causing by properly deallocating my memory wasnt leaving enough space in allocated virual memory pages to reallocate these variables down the line. So every time i needed to perform a specific function windows was throwing more and more virtual memory chunks at me, and I was only ever seeing the correct actual virtual memory usage, until, after hours, it would have allocated enough chunks to be noticeable.

All in all, I wound up having to impliment memory pools anyways, which is what I tried to avoid doing in the first place by just managing my memory by hand.

 

[Sou Da]

Literally, none of the games I've worked on feel like real games to me, because I spend almost all of my time dealing with bits & pieces and only a tiny amount of time working with something that resembles a finished game.

I see this sentiment expressed a lot by game directors

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

Seeing the development of the UC4 jeep sequence was pretty crazy. Video games are hard :/

Yes and unfortunately I see things getting even more difficult, time consuming and costly. I hate to imagine what it will take to make AAA games 5 to 10 years from now.

 

[Flame Lord]

The article that was discussed earlier this week about how consoles are "shit" because they "broke their promise" to have instantly loading games... was goddam infuriating. Absolutely infuriating topic to read.

Wasn't "instant loading" in that topic referring to not having to download patches for two or three hours? What's wrong with that?

 

[Krejlooc]

Wasn't "instant loading" in that topic referring to not having to download patches for two or three hours? What's wrong with that?

A) those patches are important, and if they are that big, its not because they are lazy. Large file sizes turn into millions of dollars wasted in sever costs over the years. They are large because, usually, they need to be.

B) no, the thread was bitching about not being able to pop in a disc and having the game instantly running

C) in one exchange, I saw a user bitch about file sizes and loading times, then immediately complain that things arent compressed enough (and not talking about updates). Compression = decompression time. If you are bitching about long loading times, compression will make those times longer.

 

[Crossing Eden]

We definitely need more articles like this, great stuff.

 

[xzeldax3]

This is a great article! Too many people love to spout nonsense in comment sections without realizing how much time, money, and effort, it takes to make games.

 

[sn00zer]

Ah so this is the actual site Polygon wanted to make. Seems like a more accessible gamasutra which is great.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

I feel like a lot of this is standard game development information that has been relayed to some degree over the past 15 years in various mediums, including at various points in time on GAF itself from devs and ex-devs.

I am continually surprised to see people unfamiliar with a lot of this stuff on what are supposedly enthusiast forums. Hell, I remember LucasArts describing their equivalent to grey boxing with their SCUMM adventure titles in a newsletter they put out in the early 90s.

The fact that a lot of this is considered new or unknown information is a big source of frustration to many of us who try to discuss these topics here, and is often why a lot of developers are primarily lurkers.

 

[Krejlooc]

I feel like a lot of this is standard game development information that has been relayed to some degree over the past 15 years in various mediums, including at various points in time on GAF itself from devs and ex-devs.

I am continually surprised to see people unfamiliar with a lot of this stuff on what are supposedly enthusiast forums. Hell, I remember LucasArts describing their equivalent to grey boxing with their SCUMM adventure titles in a newsletter they put out in the early 90s.

There are users on this forum who could have potentially been born 15 years after the last scumm games released. Its kind of important to reiterate this stufff because there is constantly a new group of people who have never heard it before.

Like you say you heard about greyboxing from lucas arts games, yet ive read about computer scientists doing this way back in the 70s. Everyone has to start somewhere.

 

[IcyStorm]

I've been wondering what Tina Amini's been up to post-Kotaku. Looking forward to reading this.

 

[Flame Lord]

A) those patches are important, and if they are that big, its not because they are lazy. Large file sizes turn into millions of dollars wasted in sever costs over the years. They are large because, usually, they need to be.

B) no, the thread was bitching about not being able to pop in a disc and having the game instantly running

C) in one exchange, I saw a user bitch about file sizes and loading times, then immediately complain that things arent compressed enough (and not talking about updates). Compression = decompression time. If you are bitching about long loading times, compression will make those times longer.

In that case it sounds like it would be in the best interest for both devs and consumers if games weren't released in a state where they need big ass patches on release. SE claim they delayed FFXV to put more work into it, and prevent the need of a patch day one, why can't other devs do that too?

 

[XiaNaphryz]

There are users on this forum who could have potentially been born 15 years after the last scumm games released. Its kind of important to reiterate this stufff because there is constantly a new group of people who have never heard it before.

Like you say you heard about greyboxing from lucas arts games, yet ive read about computer scientists doing this way back in the 70s. Everyone has to start somewhere.

What I'm saying is that these articles and posts come up every few years at least, and each time it seems like it's a huge revelation to a lot of people. I guess what I'm saying is that there isn't an easy way for people to come across this info readily on their own to get educated on the subject, or is something that people in general aren't actively seeking out to begin with.

 

[Koozek]

It should be mandatory for everyone on GAF to read articles like this. It's scary how little many here understand about game development.

 

[piratepwnsninja]

There are users on this forum who could have potentially been born 15 years after the last scumm games released. Its kind of important to reiterate this stufff because there is constantly a new group of people who have never heard it before.

Like you say you heard about greyboxing from lucas arts games, yet ive read about computer scientists doing this way back in the 70s. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Oh man, I didn't even think about that in the bolded.

Anyway, great article...I've been in AAA for over a decade, and the surprising things are:

1. Just how little has changed
2. How similar the experience is in many ways, no matter where I've been

Sure there are differences, but a lot of the same issues exist no matter where you go. I actually speak to a number of students about game development and design (I love teaching) and so many just don't know what it takes to make a game. I'm currently working on a project with my son, who has decided he wants to be a game designer, too (he's 15) and he's expressed just how little he know about what it takes to make a game.

Another great article, more specific to game design, is The Door Problem. If you've never read it, I highly recommend it.

http://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/

 

[Krejlooc]

What I'm saying is that these articles and posts come up every few years at least, and each time it seems like it's a huge revelation to a lot of people. I guess what I'm saying is that there isn't an easy way for people to come across this info readily on their own to get educated on the subject, or is something that people in general aren't actively seeking out to begin with.

well, I generally agree, but there is something to be said for packing the material into digestible, entertaining chunks. There are two problems with expecting people to go out of their way to educate themselves on the subject of making games:

1 - making games isn't like playing games, and it's not reasonable to expect people to be entertained or go out of their way to learn how they are made just because they like playing games. I'd imagine most people who talk about game creation that have no idea what it is like, do so simply because they like playing games, not because they are actually interested in development. If you talk about games, eventually the subject of game making is bound to come up.

2 - you can find really great stories and bits of dev history on sites like gamasutra, but it becomes preaching to the choir after a while. If you're on gamasutra, it's because you are already in the realm of studying about business of making video games. There is an intimidation factor that can go on because software development is sort of a cumulative skill that you acquire over years. If the other asrticles on the site aren't speaking to your level of expertise, this type of article will get lost in the shuffle of other articles you already aren't reading.

Articles like this aren't really meant for people interested in development. I'd compare something like this to planet earth (the documentary) - something really attractive that will get people who wouldn't normally give a damn about looking into this stuff interested enough to actually look into this stuff, much like what planet earth did with nature documentaries.

 

[Krejlooc]

In that case it sounds like it would be in the best interest for both devs and consumers if games weren't released in a state where they need big ass patches on release. SE claim they delayed FFXV to put more work into it, and prevent the need of a patch day one, why can't other devs do that too?

plenty of reasons. One of the primary reasons? Investors, or shareholders. A second, less obvious reason? Because what else is the team going to work on? If these people are still going to be drawing employment after a game has gone gold, why wouldn't you use their work force to continue to work on the game, when there is already a deployment method out there that facilitates it?

People assume not having patches would mean better quality initial releases. That is hardly true.

 

[Neoleo2143]

Games are damn miracles. The amount of stuff that has to go right to make a "good" game is absolutely insane. These are years long projects, projects that could potentially die at the last moment. It sounds terrifying. Game developers have all my respect until they prove they don't for that reason.

 

[terencecah]

"Lazy devs" should be bannable

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Oh man, I didn't even think about that in the bolded.

Anyway, great article...I've been in AAA for over a decade, and the surprising things are:

1. Just how little has changed
2. How similar the experience is in many ways, no matter where I've been

Yeah, even in the PS1 days you still had to worry about asset impact on performance, etc.

One thing that should have gotten a lot better over the years is the production/project management/scheduling side of things. That's nowhere near as matured as it should be. It's better sure, but nowhere near where it should be.

Promotions and career structure can also be better. It's still the case in many places that of you want to move up, you have to take the management route. But not everyone has the skillset for that role, and most companies aren't willing to put in the investment for training in those areas either. On the bright side, at least some places are starting to provide two career paths for people now: the traditional management route where you become a supervisor or lead that could then move on to more senior management roles, and an individual contributor route for those who just want to move up in seniority and still get promotions/raises working in their specific area.

 

[Lime]

What I'm saying is that these articles and posts come up every few years at least, and each time it seems like it's a huge revelation to a lot of people. I guess what I'm saying is that there isn't an easy way for people to come across this info readily on their own to get educated on the subject, or is something that people in general aren't actively seeking out to begin with.

I blame the secrecy and lack of transparency in the games industry for this. The amount of NDAs and the lack of insight into contexts of production on a broad mainstream level means that general consumers and enthusiasts aren't likely to encounter how the sausage gets made, in contrast to other entertainment media industries that are more transparent and open about their production processes.

Add to the fact that marketing wants to control the image of the happy and glamorous rockstar developer that loves making your favorite games so awesome and people get a skewed perception of how games actually are made.

 

[More_Badass]

well, I generally agree, but there is something to be said for packing the material into digestible, entertaining chunks. There are two problems with expecting people to go out of their way to educate themselves on the subject of making games:

1 - making games isn't like playing games, and it's not reasonable to expect people to be entertained or go out of their way to learn how they are made just because they like playing games. I'd imagine most people who talk about game creation that have no idea what it is like, do so simply because they like playing games, not because they are actually interested in development. If you talk about games, eventually the subject of game making is bound to come up.

2 - you can find really great stories and bits of dev history on sites like gamasutra, but it becomes preaching to the choir after a while. If you're on gamasutra, it's because you are already in the realm of studying about business of making video games. There is an intimidation factor that can go on because software development is sort of a cumulative skill that you acquire over years. If the other asrticles on the site aren't speaking to your level of expertise, this type of article will get lost in the shuffle of other articles you already aren't reading.

Articles like this aren't really meant for people interested in development. I'd compare something like this to planet earth (the documentary) - something really attractive that will get people who wouldn't normally give a damn about looking into this stuff interested enough to actually look into this stuff, much like what planet earth did with nature documentaries.

But would you say that people in general aren't interested in the behind-the-scenes? Like movies and tv shows have been doing making-of featurettes for years. The general public clearly is interested in that, or else companies wouldn't waste the time and effort filming those things and doing interviews and whatnot. Watching movies isn't the same as watching about movie production, but many find it intriguing and enjoyable

But the general gaming audience doesn't seem to have that interest to want to learn more

 

[Lime]

But should you say that people in general aren't interested in the behind-the-scenes. Like movies and tv shows have been doing making-of featurettes for years. The general public clearly is interested in that, or else companies wouldn't waste the time and effort filming those things and doing interviews and whatnot. Watching movies isn't the same as watching about movie production, but many find it intriguing and enjoyable

But the general gaming audience doesn't seem to have that interest to what to learn more

I disagree about your last statement. I don't think it's the fault of consumers or gaming audiences, but the industry's irrational secrecy and marketings cultivation of game development as so awesome and amazing that creates amazing products you need to buy day one. ->

I blame the secrecy and lack of transparency in the games industry for this. The amount of NDAs and the lack of insight into contexts of production on a broad mainstream level means that general consumers and enthusiasts aren't likely to encounter how the sausage gets made, in contrast to other entertainment media industries that are more transparent and open about their production processes.

Add to the fact that marketing wants to control the image of the happy and glamorous rockstar developer that loves making your favorite games so awesome and people get a skewed perception of how games actually are made.

 

[Evilisk]

Gonna sub this thread, since I can't read the article right now

 

[XiaNaphryz]

I blame the secrecy and lack of transparency in the games industry for this. The amount of NDAs and the lack of insight into contexts of production on a broad mainstream level means that general consumers and enthusiasts aren't likely to encounter how the sausage gets made, in contrast to other entertainment media industries that are more transparent and open about their production processes.

Add to the fact that marketing wants to control the image of the happy and glamorous rockstar developer that loves making your favorite games so awesome and people get a skewed perception of how games actually are made.

NDAs may mean we can't get into specifics or use particular examples of why something went well or went off the rails, but it's still easy to go over generalized descriptions of processes, pipelines, etc. A lot of this stuff has been published in game development books over the past decade, or even can be described and found in general books on software project management or software development.

 

[Krejlooc]

Yeah, even in the PS1 days you still had to worry about asset impact on performance, etc.

I ran into this recently when I was writing my dreamcast programming tutorials. The tile accelerator on the dreamcast has a definable bin size that you declare at the start of a project. You can literally watch your performance decrease to dramatic effect the less you allocate to those bin sizes. I am talking huge, enormous downgrades in performace. As in, with the smallest bin size I had selected, I was having trouble reaching 5-digit polygon counts. With the largest? I'm pushing millions.

One thing that should have gotten a lot better is the production/project management/scheduling side of things. That's nowhere near as matured as it should be.

On the low end, I'd say management software has dramatically increased for indies. People may have laughed at in the beginning, but stuff like Slack is so important when you're coordinating a project with people not even in the same city as yourself. The emergence of git has also been such a huge improvement for version management, even over bog standard subversion control (which itself was a huge improvement over the alternative... which I guess was just keeping lots, and lots of backups lol)

Promotions and career structure can also be better. It's still the case in many places that of you want to move up, you have to take the management route. But not everyone has the skillset for that role, and most companies aren't willing to put in the investment for training in those areas either. On the bright side, at least some places are starting to provide two career paths for people now: the traditional management route where you become a supervisor or lead that could then move on to more senior management roles, and an individual contributor route for those who just want to move up in seniority and still get promotions/raises working in their specific area.

Man, I see traditional AAA development as a dead end job, personally, unless you get in crazy young. I think people will burn out before they advance, and that's sort of by design. This is one reason I really, really love crowd sourcing. It's enabling a lot of entrepreneurs to forgo the traditional development structure and strike out on their own.

 

[Krejlooc]

I blame the secrecy and lack of transparency in the games industry for this.

Hey, like it or not, this is a competitive industry built on trade secrets. Your value is directly tied to what you know that your competition does not.

This is not a problem exclusive to gaming. All STEM fields have a degree of secrecy about them.

But would you say that people in general aren't interested in the behind-the-scenes? Like movies and tv shows have been doing making-of featurettes for years. The general public clearly is interested in that, or else companies wouldn't waste the time and effort filming those things and doing interviews and whatnot. Watching movies isn't the same as watching about movie production, but many find it intriguing and enjoyable

But the general gaming audience doesn't seem to have that interest to want to learn more

No, I'd definitely agree there is a want to understand. But that's not usually enough. Funny that you used the analog of behind-the-scenes featurettes, as I almost brought that up myself. They keep making those, despite covering a lot of the same ground, because there is constantly a new audience of potential film makers. And, at the same time, I'd say the general public is almost just as woefully misinformed about film as they are game development.

 

[Delusibeta]

I disagree about your last statement. I don't think it's the fault of consumers or gaming audiences, but the industry's irrational secrecy and marketings cultivation of game development as so awesome and amazing that creates amazing products you need to buy day one. ->

Kickstarter (in particular, Broken Age and the accompanying Double Fine Adventure documentary series) has generated a tonne of evidence against that statement, and conveniently said evidence also falls in line with More Badass' assertion that gamers (broadly speaking) aren't interested in how the sausage was made.